Due to ‘second screen’ culture, Twitter and Live Events have become a great combination. Event attendees use Twitter to project views, questions and quotes, creating a live stream that anyone, attending or not, can gain access to. This is great for the event’s profile but as an organiser, it can be difficult to manage both the live event and the online one. This is where Twilert can help.

Twilert is a monitoring tool for Twitter which allows you to setup multiple searches for specific Twitter users, hashtags or brand names. Once your keyword is mentioned, Twilert captures it and sends you the results in an email alert.

In an event environment, where there may be multiple brand names, handles, hashtags and comments that you need to monitor and respond to, Twilert saves time and helps you to provide a seamless online-offline event experience.

Setup up your account at www.twilert.com in just a few minutes and then use the three simple steps below to plan for your next event.

1. Pre Event

a) Begin to think of the keywords and names you will need to monitor around your event and get these set up in your Twilert account. Almost certainly, you will want to track your event name, the organiser’s name (if different) and any associated hashtags. This is a great time to start experimenting with combination searches, which will filter the most relevant results into your Twilert email alerts.

Example: if UBM were holding the event ‘UBMLive’ the below search would ensure that they grab every mention, even if the user forgot to tag their handle:

‘UBMlive ’ OR ‘UBM Live’ OR @UBMLive OR #UBMlive

b) Allocate time each day to read through your Twilerts and respond to mentions. Once you spot the key influencers, set a Twilert solely dedicated to monitoring their feeds – it’s more than likely that these will be your biggest brand advocates on the day. You can do this by using one of the search terms below:

i) from: operator e.g. from:twilert – will return all tweets sent from the user @twilert

ii) to: operator will include both replies and mentions where the username is the first word e.g. to:ribenauk – will find tweets sent directly to the user @ribenauk

iii) @operator will give you all mentions of an account, including replies and retweets, but will exclude any tweets sent from that account. e.g. @venuesetc – will send you all mentions of the user @Venuesetc without their own tweets

c) Decide on your Twitter monitoring plan of action for the big day. Some of the questions you may want to ask are; who will be monitoring your Twilert feed? How often will they look at it and respond to users? Are there any additional accounts you want to monitor, such as speakers?

2. During the Event

a) Depending on your plan of action, you may want to set up a monitoring station and have someone checking on your Search History feed to capture tweets as they happen. If your event staff are on the move, set your Twilerts to ‘realtime’ and pick them up in an email alert as they occur.

b) If you’ve monitored the twitter conversation in the leadup to your event, you probably already know the registered attendees who are active on Twitter. As they arrive make an effort to tweet them saying welcome – this personal touch will ensure their event experience gets off to a great start.

c) As the comments start to pour in, highlight or RT the best ones. This will engage participants within the sessions and intrigue those who may be looking to attend next time.

d) Due to its nature of immediacy, it’s likely that you will receive both positive and negative feedback on Twitter throughout the event. Twilert will help find them all, so try to acknowledge or respond as soon as possible. Even if you can’t do anything to rectify the situation immediately, this will reassure your attendees that you’re listening. If you do manage to address their concerns and can tweet them back the best Veggie option, or that you’ve given the aircon a blast, even better!

3. Post Event

a) Your Twilert Search History index is a great source to collate and review feedback, post-event. Review any tweets you may have missed throughout the day, sharing the best ones on your profile or blog.

b) Send a personal thank-you tweet to any particularly active followers who joined you during the event. Include something that will continue the conversation – this could be a link to next year’s early-bird signup or some images from the event.

c) Learn from the feedback – create an improvements database and log anything you think you could do better next time. Make a note of the tweets which seemed to get the highest engagement and use this as the basis for next year’s social media plan.

If you have any questions about using Twilert at your next event then please drop us a tweet or email – we’d love to help you get started.

Marketing Manager @Codegent, looking after Community Manager for Twilert. Crazy about blogging, social media and all things digital. Book reader and yoga devotee, with a bit of lifestyle writing on the side.